Many questions remain about H1N1 flu vaccinations

Wednesday

Aug 26, 2009 at 2:00 AM

By fall, southern York County will join the region, state and nation in "the largest undertaking of its kind ever in the United States" when mass vaccinations against the H1N1, or swine flu, virus are slated to take place.

Deborah McDermott

By fall, southern York County will join the region, state and nation in "the largest undertaking of its kind ever in the United States" when mass vaccinations against the H1N1, or swine flu, virus are slated to take place.

"It's never been done before," said York Town Manager Rob Yandow, chairman of the York District Public Health Council, which is working to ensure the vaccination gets to the at-risk population of York County when it becomes available.

Yandow was one of more than 1,300 municipal, school and public health officials who attended an H1N1 summit in Augusta last week, as the state grapples with how to handle the influx of vaccinations when they are available from the federal government in October.

The challenges are many, he said: Where do you hold the clinics? Are there enough people to administer the shots? How do you convince at-risk people to take the shots? Will there be enough doses?

The last one is particularly worrisome, Yandow said. At this point, "nobody knows how many doses of the vaccine will get to people," although evidence indicates doses for about half the at-risk population will be available in October. Additional doses will come in smaller increments in the following weeks. That means about 180,000 doses will be coming to Maine; the at-risk population in York County alone is 94,000, he said.

Meanwhile, York school staff plan to meet on Thursday with York Hospital officials to discuss the schools' response to H1N1 and the seasonal flu in anticipation. of coming school year, said School Superintendent Henry Scipione on Tuesday. York schools open on Tuesday, Sept. 1.

At-risk populations for H1N1 are considered to be pregnant women, those age 6 months to 25 years old, health-care workers, preschool workers and those who live or work in any place with high density populations, such as correctional facilities and camps.

Yandow said he's already heard some pregnant women say they don't want to expose their fetus to the vaccine. And what about the typically healthy teenagers and young adults? "How do we reach out to them? Young people think they're invincible," he said. "They may not care about the vaccine. We have to look at each population differently. It's a huge task."

H1N1 is expected to infect about 30 percent of the population, Yandow said.

He said he's also meeting with Greater York Chamber of Commerce officials in hopes of getting the word out to businesses to plan now in case nearly a third of their work force comes down with the flu.

The public health council is meeting regularly between now and October to devise a game plan for the region. By the end of September, it will have decided where the vaccination sites will be and how those sites will be staffed. "We want to make it convenient, effective and efficient for people to get the shots," he said.

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